Train
by Aki4
Summary: For anyone who ever hankered for a 5x8 happily--well, mostly happily, I mean, this IS saiyuki--ever after. (Revised)


This, my friends, is known as a quickfic. What that means is that I have two chapters of reading, an international finance case to start on, a midterm on wednesday, a meeting for which i should have thoroughly researched one decade of nucor steel tomorrow...  
  
and i'm writing fic because i just don't want to deal with it. i think it could be called fluff.  
  
of COURSE it's 5x8.  
  
Train   
  
by Aki  
  
Darkness crept up on him, so that he had been squinting for a long time over the page before the customary headache alerted him to the passage of hours. He took his eyes away and looked through the window of the small classroom. Outside, the shadows were long and fading into the ground. The sunset was still there, but brushed by night. It would be dark, likely, by the time he got home.  
  
Gojyo would be displeased.  
  
He rubbed one finger under his dry eyes absently as he sat back for a moment. Then he came alive and shut the book before him with a brisk snap, coughing a little as the dust sprang out. Hurriedly he placed it back on the shelf, and picked up his jacket. In the doorway, he paused to take one last look around the room.   
  
There was little to see: battered brown desks smudged with effort and surreptious snacking, a chalkboard that held the assignments for the day neatly in its upper left corner. The bookshelf stood against the right wall of the classroom. A map of China hung above it. The frame had a tendency to slide down on one side, so that it looked as if Fuzhou were in danger of falling into the sea. He noticed a stray gum wrapper lying in the aisle, and went back to pick it up, unable to help himself.  
  
Outside, the air was chill; fall had arrived. Within weeks half his pupils would be called away to help bring in the harvest. Some would not be able to return until the long cold winter set in, and even then could not always make their way to school, especially when the weather was harsh. He always shoveled the path to the main road, but it was still a long, frozen way to travel for small pinched feet. Sometimes he entertained the thought of asking Hakuryuu to help with a bus service, but in the end he balked at the notion of forcing the dragon to struggle through the slush and snow.   
  
Jeep grew sluggish in the cold and preferred to spend the deep winter months curled up by the small kitchen fire, making fussy noises and snapping at Gojyo whenever his housemate allowed it to go out. This happened with surprising frequency, even on his days off; five years of traveling had failed to condition him to automatically rise before noon.   
  
Gojyo had made the change to a day job shortly after he had started teaching, when the thrill of routine had settled enough for them to believe it might last. It was ridiculous for him to go out gambling every night and come in when Hakkai was just getting up, he'd said. He could remember the conversation quite clearly.   
  
"If we keep this up I'll be stuck eating leftovers forever. Besides, the PTA might make things rough for you if they find out you're living with the man who fleeced their husbands out of last month's egg money," he'd said around his cigarette, lips sealing at the end into the smirk he knew so well.  
  
"You don't need to find work," he'd protested. "My salary isn't large, but it should cover our expenditures."   
  
At that, Gojyo had seemed startled. "You really think I could just sit around and wait for you to come home for dinner?"  
  
The question had raised images of his housemate, hands folded, in apronstrings, and the incongruity of it made him chuckle. "No, I suppose not," he'd replied.  
  
"Damn right I'm not, and I'm starting by the docks this Thursday. I'll be home after you, so YOU make the damn dinner."  
  
"I think that would be wise," he agreed. "I'm not sure I'm fully recovered from the last meal you cooked, and I'd prefer not to miss class for more than a day at a time." He'd escaped before Gojyo could do anything more than look offended.  
  
The sunset disappeared as he crossed the fields, and a few stars began to twinkle timidly in its wake. His breath steamed in the air. One lonely locomotive puffing through the sharb stubs of dry grass, he thought. Reflexively he began to toy with the image, the metaphor of a life without tracks. By the time he emerged onto the road at the end of his shortcut, he'd completed a few verses.   
  
It was purely habit now. He never shared them with anyone, or wrote them down anymore. Once he had stored all the poetry that he could wring from his moments, waking, sleeping, walking or teaching, and polished it as carefully as an apple before presenting it to her with a shy smile. Once he'd never been late, no matter how many essays remained to grade, or how little he knew about the tax administration of the Han dynasty.  
  
There were still lights in the marketplace. The old lady who sold simple fare for the less handy bachelors was often there until after the last of the herds had been brought in for the night. Some of his pupils particularly liked a kind of sticky rice sweet that she made, dyed a bright red with juice. Gojyo preferred the long flat noodles with soy sauce and strips of roasted pork. He made his way to her stall, but she was already packing. She nodded at him apologetically as he stopped a few feet away.  
  
"Too late tonight, I'm afraid. All the extra hands for harvest ate me clean out today. Come earlier tomorrow, Teacher Chou?"   
  
There were many who called him Teacher Chou now, and he barely flinched as he smiled politely and told her, Yes, he would certainly do that, and made his way back to the road. She came puffing after him before he'd gone more than a dozen steps and pressed a small warm bag into his hand.   
  
"Tea eggs, in case you're hungry," then shook her grey head violently as he reached for his wallet. "No, no, just have patience with our Shanqing, we know he's a bit slow." He thanked her profusely, assuring her that Shanqing was in fact a very bright boy, who only lacked encouragement. He could not find it in his heart to make the hint any stronger, and held the tea eggs carefully as he went on. There were still some leftovers from last night's oxtail stew, he was sure. He would go shopping early tomorrow and make a bigger breakfast.  
  
He found that he could still remember most of the train poem. It needed only one more verse to round it out, and because he still had another mile, he worked on it. He liked it. It was a good poem for an autumn night, crisp and complete and chilly with the hint of distant sadness. He was proud when he managed to work in the warm lit farmhouse windows, then chided himself by thinking of Li Bai's perfect quatrains.   
  
She would have protested that he was as good as Li Bai, or better, because he wrote poems about things for every day people. He always called her a silly goose, and a partial judge, and she always laughingly admitted that yes, she was silly, and partial, and that she would rather hear his poems than Li Bai's any day of the year.   
  
Nowadays it was only when he went out of his way to recall her that the memory sharpened enough to pierce. But when he did, the thought that he would never again see her smooth back her hair, or hear her laugh, or recite his poetry to her upturned face, then it was as if no time had passed at all.   
  
(And oh, that you had never, never been   
  
Some of your selves, my love, that some   
  
Of your several faces I had never seen!   
  
And still they come before me, and they go,   
  
And I cry aloud in the moments that intervene.)  
  
He murmured the verse to himself as he walked over the bridge. The water held the wan, wavering face of the moon. It looked up at him sadly, and he smiled back out of habit, waving his tea eggs in reassurance. There was only the last bend to go, and he would be back.   
  
The small building--a glorified shack, Gojyo had said in disgust when they'd first bought it, but it had become if not wholly cozy, at least familiar over time--was dark when he turned the corner. The moon had risen behind it, and the soft light made the black windows seem particularly empty. He stopped, surprised. The last time he'd been late Gojyo had been waiting outside, smoking up a blue-grey haze around the front door.   
  
Tonight the lights were off, and the door was closed. Could something have happened, he wondered, and felt a small surge of panic flow through old channels. It was possible, he knew that now. He hurried his steps toward the door, then started when a voice spoke out of the gloom.  
  
"You know even I never got detention until this late."  
  
He squinted. Sure enough, he could make out the crook of long legs and the hint of long hair in the darker shape of the house. "Gojyo?"  
  
"You were expecting someone else?" The tone was the same, joking, although it was too dark and he was too far to make out the smile.   
  
He walked forward. "I'm sorry, but I had to look up a few things for tomorrow's lecture. I just didn't notice the time, and what's worse, I'm afraid we're not going to have a particularly gorgeous dinner. You must be hungry--I made you wait." It struck him as he approached. He hadn't seen Gojyo, not only because it was dark, but because what he'd been looking for was missing. "Why aren't you smoking?"  
  
"I ran out an hour ago," was the brief response.  
  
"Why didn't you go out for more?" he asked, astonished.  
  
"In case you came home," and somehow the answer should have surprised him more than it did. "Anyhow, I got dinner ready, so it's all right. I promise," and this time the drawl was there, "that you will be able to go to work in the morning. I bought from Old Lady Yang. She even had a square of that stinky tofu left, though I'll be damned if I can figure out why you like the stuff."  
  
"Well, that's good," he said cheerfully as he walked up to the door. Gojyo stood up slowly, hands dug deep into pockets. "All I was able to get from her was a couple of eg--"   
  
Distantly he heard the eggshells crunch as they hit the stone step. Soft living, he thought in the collected part of his mind, had undone him; surely there had been time to move. It was a moment before he could find his voice again. Gojyo found his first.  
  
"Never," he muttered into Hakkai's ear, "come home late again. Do you really want me to go out of my mind?"  
  
He felt as if he could not breathe, although surely the arms around him were not THAT tight. "I...I'm sorry, I--"  
  
"You leave every morning, and I never know if you'll come back through this door again," Gojyo continued, as if he hadn't spoken. "I go nuts, you bastard, waiting around wondering if this is the day that you've decided that you're tired of living with me, or maybe just tired of living at all. Wondering if you've changed your name again or taken off for parts unknown."  
  
At that the words came. "I think we've all done quite enough traveling for a bit, don't you?" And it was almost as light as he wanted it to be, except that when Gojyo released his grip, it was only to take his stiff, chilled face in those long-fingered hands, palms roughened with lifting crates of raw wood. There was just barely enough moonlight to make out the man's eyes.  
  
Gojyo opened his mouth as if to speak again, then dropped his hands abruptly, and turned away. The cold air hit his cheek with the sudden disappearance of the flesh-and-blood barrier. "Never mind," his housemate said abruptly, and scooped up the eggs where they lay. "So this is your idea of dinner, eh? I oughta fire you and hire a cook. And you owe me at least two packs of cigarettes for this."  
  
"I thought you were cutting down," he felt compelled to say as he followed the other man into the house, feeling for the lights as he went.   
  
"If I wanted to deprive myself of all pleasures, I'd find myself a monkey and turn monk," came from Gojyo, pulling off his boots. "I'm going out for some right after dinner. I'm fuckin' starving."  
  
"I've worked up quite an appetite myself," he said, taking out the plates. "It's not a bad walk over those fields." It was amazing how quickly things went back to normal, how their talk bent back into its old shape. A flick of the lights.  
  
"I swear I don't know why you don't ask that lazy fat dragon of yours to give you a lift," Gojyo snorted. The lazy fat dragon left his pile of laundry and flew indignant circles around his housemate's head at that statement, and he laughed as he put the kettle on the fire.   
  
"It's not all that long, and it's good thinking time." The bowls, then cups clinked onto the table in a sure, sedate rhythm. He unbundled the food and looked away as his housemate reached for it, feeling the ghost of those sinews.   
  
"So what were you thinking about?" Gojyo asked him, through a mouthful of noodles.   
  
He put down his chopsticks. "Well, actually, I came up with a poem." Gojyo said nothing, but chewed and eyed him expectantly. "Would you like to hear it?" he found himself asking.  
  
At this, of all things, Gojyo looked a little abashed. "Uh...sure...I mean, I dunno anything about poetry."  
  
"It's ok," he smiled. "It's probably not a very good poem."  
  
"Shit, Hakkai, do you EVER stop being humble?" Gojyo rolled his eyes.   
  
"It cancels out your arrogance," he teased, and the redhead grinned at him, leaning back to lace his fingers behind his head, his elbows pulled taut to support the point. He'd always admired the way the man could lounge, almost posing with that fluid sense of balance. It said something of a created comfort, a hardwon ease.   
  
He paused before he started, stopped by a sudden longing to draw out the moment--the taste of cold noodles and hot tea, the quiet night that lay outside, the frozen fields and the distant stars and the light from the lamp that hung over the kitchen table.   
  
The fit of things fell apart so easily, like dandelion seeds. A puff of air would do it.   
  
Gojyo waited for him, legs stretched out, chewing silently on a toothpick, grimacing in recognition of the fact that it wasn't a cigarette. If he closed his eyes he would see that look, rearranged by moonlight and intensity.   
  
The faces still came and went, sometimes. In the future perhaps they wouldn't be all hers.   
  
"I thought of it when I was walking home, because it was cold out..."  
  
Still--it would be such a pity, to wish that this had never been.  
  
"...so my breath made me think of the smoke from a train."  
  
~owari~  
  
tadaaa. it's six am. i suck. and i can't write hakkai, AT ALL. the man's mind is about as transparent as a steel ball.   
  
this is my last post for a while, for the aforementioned reasons, and i'm sorry it had to be such a lame one (no plot, no sex, no character development, no sex, no goku or sanzo, no sex, no explanation, no sex, you get the idea. this is a happily ever after, or at least a slightly angstily but mostly happily ever after fic. they all went west and got back in one piece and hakkai and gojyo moved into a house and eventually screwed each other on a regular basis. with love. of course.  
  
now...please tell me what you think *begs*  
  
PS: X-parrot, WHEN IS HAKKAI COMING BACK? and i DON'T mean gonou. please, pretty please~~  
  
thanks to my ten loyal reviewers of Then Go. i promise you the next chapter, when it comes, will be much fatter and contain more of the cast, new and old. ^_~ and angel baby, i will certainly take that into mind when trying to motivate myself to make time and write.  
  
~Aki  
  
PS: the poem is from a D.H. Lawrence poem called, "The End." i can never think of titles so i google until i hit a poem that sounds spiffy. only this time i changed the title from "had never been" coz the fic was too darn fluffy. 


End file.
